Teacher Reviewed: Good Civics and US History Curriculum Recommendations for Homeschool and Classrooms
The rain streaked the classroom windows last Wednesday when Ms. Lopez knocked, holding a crumpled printout of curriculum options for her 8th grader, who she homeschools. “He told me history is just dead white guys making dead white guys’ decisions,” she said, leaning against my desk where my half-empty iced coffee left a ring on top of my lesson plans. A crayon drawing of a T-Rex my little cousin drew for me was taped to the desk leg, and I had to move it out of the way to talk. “I don’t want him thinking that. But I don’t know where to start looking that doesn’t cost a fortune or take four hours a day.” I nodded, because I’d been there. Three years ago, I dumped my district’s standard 7th grade US history textbook after half my class fell asleep during a lecture on the Constitutional Convention, and I started testing curricula both for my middle school classroom and my own 10-year-old’s at-home learning. I’ve thrown out more bad curricula than I’ve kept, but I’ve landed on a handful that work for most people, whether you’re managing 30 kids or just one.
The first bad one I tried was all craft projects with no throughline—we glued cotton balls on a map of the Louisiana Purchase and called it a day, but at the end of the week, no one could tell me why the purchase mattered or who was living on the land already. The next one was just a rebranded textbook, same old dates, same old one-sided stories, just with fancier photos. I learned pretty quickly that good civics and US history curriculum doesn’t just tell kids what happened. It connects what happened to the places they live and the things they care about.
For homeschool parents or small classroom teachers working with middle schoolers who want hands-on learning without hours of prep, I always recommend Home School in the Woods’ Project Passport: US History. I used it with my 5th grader last year, and it’s structured around “stops” through history, each with short readings and one low-prep hands-on project. Instead of starting with Columbus and jumping straight to the Revolutionary War without looking back, it centers people who are usually left out of standard texts: enslaved people writing about their experiences, Indigenous leaders negotiating for their land, female factory workers leading strikes in the 1900s. One of my kid’s favorite projects was mapping the redlining districts in our own city. We drove past the neighborhood that got marked “hazardous” in the 1930s, and he noticed it still has fewer sidewalks and no full-service grocery store than the neighborhood that got marked “best.” That’s the kind of connection you don’t get from a textbook. All the printables are ready to go, so you don’t have to hunt for extra resources, and you can do it in 20 to 30 minutes a day if that’s all you have.
For high schoolers, the best option I’ve found is completely free: The American Yawp. It’s an open-source US history textbook built by a group of working history professors, and you can download the whole thing or individual chapters for nothing. I use it as the base for my 10th grade US history elective, and I love that it doesn’t skip over the hard, messy parts of history. It doesn’t pretend the country’s story is a straight line of constant progress, and it doesn’t reduce people to one-dimensional heroes or villains. It includes the forced removal of Indigenous nations, the exploitation of Black labor after the Civil War, and the activism of disabled and LGBTQ+ organizers that most textbooks don’t mention until the last 10 pages. I pair it with their free collection of primary sources, so kids can read actual letters and flyers instead of just reading a summary of what someone thinks happened. It’s easy to adjust for different skill levels, which works for both classrooms and homeschools.
When it comes to civics specifically, I’ve thrown out all my old worksheets about the three branches of government. Kids don’t care how a bill becomes a law until they see it change something they care about. The civics curriculum I use now is We the Civics Kids from the Center for Civic Education. It’s project-based: instead of memorizing the Bill of Rights, kids pick a small change they want to see in their school or town, and work through the process of making it happen. Last year, my class pushed for more water fountains on our school’s track field, presented our proposal to the school board, and won. Every kid in that class can tell you how local government works now, way better than they ever could from a multiple-choice test. It’s free for classroom teachers, and the full homeschool package is less than $50 for a whole year.
If you’re on an extremely tight budget, you don’t have to buy anything at all. The National Archives has free, ready-made lesson plans for every era of US history, built around original documents and photos. For civics, their “Know Your Representative” lesson walks kids through looking up how their local representatives vote on issues they care about, and writing a note to them if they disagree. It takes 20 minutes, and it gets kids thinking about civics as something they do, not something they memorize.
Ms. Lopez ended up downloading The American Yawp for free and ordering the We the Civics Kids workbook a month ago. Last week, she sent me a quick text: her son is working on a proposal to add a crosswalk near the neighborhood park he plays soccer at, and he’s already emailed two city council members to ask for a meeting. He told her history isn’t boring anymore, because it’s not just stuff that happened a long time ago. It’s why the crosswalk isn’t there now, and it’s his job to help change it. I’m still testing new curricula every year, and I still adjust lessons to fit what my class or my kid is interested in that month. There’s no perfect fit for every family or every classroom, but the good ones don’t just test kids on dates. They remind them they get to shape what happens next.
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